Reporter Richard Fineberg won a national business journalism award for a meticulous investigation of an early version of the Alaska gas pipeline dream in 1979.

Fineberg’s trip to New York City to collect the $5,000 cash prize left a lasting impression on Howard Weaver, the Alaska newspaperman who at the time was the editor of “The Alaska Advocate,” where Fineberg’s treatise had appeared.

“Richard, a banjo-playing railroad buff, flew as far as Seattle but then hopped freights from there to New York and back. He told me he kept the check in his shoe for safekeeping on the return leg,” Weaver wrote in his autobiography.

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Republican Congressional candidate Nick Begich the Third has tried hard to distance himself from a company owned by his father, Nick Begich Jr., an enterprise that remains one of Begich the Third’s largest income sources.

Begich the Third claims he has nothing to do with Earthpulse Press or any of the ideas promoted on its defunct website about mind control, weather control, government conspiracies, etc. He merely collects money from the company as a 17 percent owner.

That’s not exactly true. For the past 12 years, Begich the Third has been a company director, treasurer and secretary of Earthpulse Press.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy has spent $9,640 of state money on partisan political ads, many of which referred to “petitions'“ on education reforms and parental rights.

There were never any petitions. It was a scam.

He was simply collecting names and addresses of people who could be called upon for political support.

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The funeral service for Dick Olson, long a mainstay of KJNP radio and television, will be Friday at 11 a.m. at True North Church, followed Saturday by a memorial potlatch at the David Salmon Tribal Hall.

I always enjoyed talking to Dick when our paths crossed in Fairbanks, as they often did for decades. He attended many public events representing the Gospel Station at the Top of the Nation and always did so with a friendly smile and a welcoming presence.

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“The Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF) concludes the 2024 federal fiscal year with the successful delivery of over $1B of transportation related projects,” the department claims.

Well, that’s part of the story.

The department is still not telling the whole truth about the State Transportation Improvement Plan and the August redistribution debacle.

The DOT deception machine is working overtime, trying to conceal failures by pretending they didn’t happen and simply proclaiming victory.

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Billionaire Jeff Hildebrand is more likely to show up in the news for his exploits in exclusive polo clubs across the country or for raising money for Donald Trump than for any of the details on what his company, Hilcorp, has in mind for Alaska.

Hilcorp certainly likes it that way.

Even in Houston his limited name recognition is such that on April 3 this year, the Houston Chronicle headlined a short profile this way: “Who is little known billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand? What to know about the richest man in Houston.”

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Alaska news organizations and political leaders have never paid enough attention to Jeff Hildebrand, though he is the single most important player in the Alaska economy and one of the richest men in America.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump asked the oil and gas industry this year to give $1 billion to Trump’s campaign as a “deal.” He promised to reward industry owners with tax cuts and other government actions—an exchange that sounds exactly like bribery.

Hildebrand was one of four oil tycoons who hosted a Houston fundraiser for Trump in May at which the host committee members gave $250,000 each or $500,000 per couple, the Financial Times reported.

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A fresh reminder that former President Donald Trump does not know the name of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and that he continues to lie about the oil prospects of the coastal plain.

"We have Bagram in Alaska,” Trump said in a campaign event in Michigan, confusing ANWR with an airfield in Afghanistan.

“They say it might be as big, might be bigger than, all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn't do it. Nobody could do it. I got it done,” said Trump.

“In their first week they terminated it,” Trump said, while host Sarah Huckabee Sanders nodded in approval.

Trump has been lying about ANWR and its oil potential for six years. He has also lying about the fossil fuel reserves of the United States and lying that oil production would increase fourfold with him as president.

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As I reported here on August 28, the state missed out on more than $50 million in federal funding for highway projects because of the continuing troubles with the handling of transportation planning.

The Anchorage Daily News picked up on the story Sunday, with a story that includes the claim that the Dunleavy administration is pleased that it only received $19 million of the $71.4 million sought through the so-called August redistribution process.

“We are actually pleased to have captured this $19 million,” said Shannon McCarthy of the transportation public relations department.

The transportation department may be pleased with itself. I don’t know why.

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Private companies that do business or want to do business with the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation often pick up the tab for corporation employees to travel to office sites, conferences and other meetings.

There are rules in the Alaska Administrative Manual about how to handle this, but the Permanent Fund has not followed them.

With more and more companies offering to pay for travel, the fund is proposing to change the way it accounts for these trips to come into alignment with the state regulations.

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The Alaska Legislature tried to shut down the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation plan to run an Anchorage office for a handful of employees, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the trustees declined to go along.

The trustees are now proposing $35,000 to continue an Anchorage lease that the Legislature officially rejected. The corporation trustees voted 4-2 in June to ignore the Legislature on this, backed up by the governor.

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The 2024 financial disclosure reports of Rep. Mary Peltola and Republican Nick Begich the Third were due a month before the primary election, but the clerk’s office of the U.S. House claims they were not filed.

It makes little difference, however, as there is a $200 token penalty for candidates who do not file in a timely manner.

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John Espindola, whose 2023 appointment to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska led to a new law this year making it harder for the governor to put unqualified people on the commission, is now the chairman of the RCA.

In a meeting Wednesday, the other commissioners elected Espindola, the former personal assistant to Dunleavy, to preside over the commission.

There is already one vacancy on the five-member commission. There will soon be two.

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The Ketchikan dog survival story is a good one.

A week after the Ketchikan landslide that killed city employee Sean Griffin and injured three others, state geologist Travis Watkins heard whimpering in the wreckage of a house that had been pushed 47 feet.

James Montiver was able to escape the building after the slide, but Bill Montiver was trapped and later rescued.

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I suspect that some people in Minto, the 150-person village northwest of Fairbanks, don’t know what is being done in their names by Minto Money, which makes small loans at interest rates of more than 700 percent on the internet.

Minto Money says it does not do business in Alaska, is not subject to state laws that limit interest rates and does not have to be licensed in any state.

It is allegedly organized under the laws of the Native Village of Minto and headquartered at “205 Lakeview Drive, Suite 7, Minto, Alaska.”

As one of numerous lawsuits against Minto Money says, there is a tribal building at that address with no suites or numbers, so it is an unlikely site for e-commerce.

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The federal highway department annually marks the end of August with a redistribution of billions in transportation dollars that states haven’t obligated.

It does this through a competitive process in which states must have plans in place to obligate the money for approved projects before the end of the fiscal year September 30.

Alaska came up short in the competition this year, with a $19 million share, down from $108 million last year and $87 million two years ago.

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AG Tregarrick Taylor refused in February to join the lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission, eight other states and the District of Columbia against the proposed $24.6 billion Kroger merger. There is no reason to swallow his claim that prices at Fred Meyer will drop if 18 Alaska Safeway and Carrs stores are sold off to an East Coast company with no Alaska ties that will have a hard time competing in Alaska.

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During an extended whine two years ago, Sen. Dan Sullivan attacked President Joe Biden for using two Marines as political props for a speech in Philadelphia in which Biden said: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. Now, I want to be very clear, very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.”

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The mess created by problems with the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan has had its first clear financial consequence—the state stands to lose tens of millions in federal funds because it didn’t have the paperwork in order for projects to spend it on.

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